


Bottled Light From Hotels

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:48:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25137961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: Spilling everything.
Relationships: Thomas Armitage/Sgt Solomon Tozer
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	Bottled Light From Hotels

**Author's Note:**

> The long-awaited, by me, mostly, follow-up to my story, "The Moon Is In the Gutter". Having read that story will make this one make more sense, but as neither of them is particularly lavish with narrative, being mainly an excuse to have Armitage think about how much he wants to fuck Tozer while he's fucking Tozer, if you give that one a pass, you won't miss much. This story takes place immediately after "The Moon Is In the Gutter", both of these slotting in somewhere late in the events of "The C, the C, the Open C", after Tozer's conversation with Armitage and Pilkington.  
> The title of this story and the quote in the summary come from the song Stranger Than Kindness, by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.  
> I am not involved in the production of The Terror. No one pays me to do this. This story and the work it's based on are fiction. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

Perhaps he’s hearing things. Just as quickly as it began, the calling stops. It doesn’t fade or seem to go off in another direction. It just stops.  
“Maybe it was the wind,” Thomas says absently, looking to the side, the opening of the tent. For a moment, he’s still, silent. He is, he finds to his annoyance, holding his breath. Yet, he can’t let it out, not yet, waiting, as he is, to see a hand, small, and pale, and too soft, too unblemished for where they’ve been, emerge from between the dark flaps of the tent like the point of a knife.   
Tozer’s hand on his cheek turns his gaze away. The spell is broken. He looks at Tozer, still waiting, but for something else; something he cannot name.  
He can, but doesn’t dare.  
They can’t both be hearing things.  
“Maybe it was just that,” Tozer says gently, all the same.  
And now.  
There is no place left to hide.  
He kisses Tozer. To spite what they’ve just done, it seems that neither of them is expecting it, for they both breathe out suddenly. Thomas is trembling, though from fear or from relief, he cannot say. So many things mingle together in this way, now, or are filed down by weakness and weariness so that the failures of the body leech into the soul. Are their souls now sick, as well? Only, they must be. He’s thought all of this before, turning it over in his mind as though half-asleep. He ends up in the same place he always does. It is a sickness they share.  
For that, he licks Tozer’s lower lip, seeks admission. And it is granted. It is as sweet as the first kiss, now rolling into memory as a dream does, even though it occurred minutes, a quarter of an hour earlier. Each second drops into antiquity as soon as it unfolds, and it feels like he’s always been here, pressed against Tozer, tasting him, touching him. It is, as history uncovered, both heavy with the weight of time and shockingly new. He slips Tozer’s braces down his shoulders, pulls up his shirt until he makes a gap between shirt and trousers sufficiently large for his hand. His hand enters. He touches bare skin, not for the first time, but a much wider expanse. He just lets himself touch, like a blind man would, or like a drunkard waking in a dark room testing the borders of his bed lest he tumble from it. Now, he caresses, fingers spread across Tozer’s ribs. Now, his hand flat against Tozer’s breast, he rubs. All the while, he is kissing Tozer, and Tozer is kissing him, deeply, with an aching slowness. Tozer takes off his shirt. Fear of the cold grips Thomas but just as quickly releases its grasp, and Thomas allows himself to be likewise undressed.  
He’d looked for so long, but hadn’t touched.  
Now, he is at a loss.  
It is a danger he had considered, once, long ago, but dismissed, as the danger seemed as much a foregone conclusion as anything else. Or, he had allowed himself to be so swept up in folly that the danger became exciting. He would confess. For his confession of ignorance, he would be forced to greater abandon; all sweetness flowing from what was not taken, but that which he, in the generosity of ignorance, could not help but give.  
But he can only look, as he once did; knowing want that takes no direction, becomes fretful from what cannot be imagined. Worse, he could imagine, but what came to mind was either stupid fumbling or something all but unspeakable. Not enough. Much too much. Want will have movement, though, and it will take him where it may. He agrees to it. He resolves himself. He reaches out, places his hands on Tozer’s arms, runs his hands up, and then down again. Then, up. Then, down. He bows his head. He presses his mouth to Tozer’s neck, his shoulder. How soft the skin is, and how solid the flesh beneath. How warm Tozer’s hands are. How helpless he is before all, Tozer lifting his head, and kissing his mouth again. Helpless, he lets himself be eased down onto his bed, his hands moving from Tozer’s arms to his shoulders, to his back, to his hips. Before he knows it, he is overcome. Beneath his hands, Tozer’s hips move.  
And later, much later, even before he had understood what Tozer, what all of them were doing there, he had suspected. Thomas had told himself he was being fanciful, spiteful, perverse. Gibson had still been alive. That had been some sort of assurance, at least. Yet, Thomas had looked, and he had seen, and he had imagined. If it was sometimes pleasing to him to see how Tozer inclined his head to speak to Hickey, to note how little space there was between them- what was that, what was it to Thomas? Then, Hickey sometimes smiled, brightly, easily, looking up at Tozer as though no one else existed, Tozer looking down at him, curiously, softly, and it was plain to Thomas what that was to him. That was pain. At night, he sometimes heard things. At a distance, words lose their shape, but voices, never their character. Sometimes, there were no words, at all.  
It was only the wind.  
What do you like? Thomas wants to ask.  
“Is this what you do with him?”  
Tozer looks stricken. Hurt. Thomas feels himself flinch. He waits- He waits to be laughed at, shouted at. He waits to be hit. He waits to be quit and left alone. He holds onto Tozer more tightly. The first of these, he can bear, and the last, he can at least try to prevent. “He’s not here, is he?” Tozer says softly. He sounds sad, but he sounds relieved, and he sounds, Thomas lets himself think, resolved. He’s accepted it. It’s over.  
“Is it over?” Thomas asks, though doing so makes him anxious in a way he can’t place. He brings his leg up, wraps himself more securely around Tozer.  
“Never mind about that, about him.”  
“Is that why you came here?” As he says it, he cautiously moves his hand to Tozer’s face, cups it against his cheek. Looking down at him, Tozer holds it there.  
“I’ve given up trying to understand why anyone does anything. Most of all, myself.”  
“What do you want me to do?”  
“Just hold onto me, Tommy.”  
It’s very much as he imagined, yet he couldn’t have imagined it in full. His hands are on Tozer and Tozer’s hands are on him. They undress each other, as foolish and dangerous as it is in the cold, in that company. Thomas is not surprised. He doesn’t know how he could have thought he would be. Thomas hasn’t touched, hasn’t even looked, but he has seen. Now, in feeling Tozer against him, it’s like walking for the first time a territory one has only mapped. For being untraveled, it’s not unknown. One man is not so very different from another.  
Of course he is.   
If Tozer is unlike any other man that Thomas has seen, has always been, from the first time that Thomas saw him, what seems to have been so very long ago, though the initial image, impression, remains, as though painted somewhere inside, it must also be so that Thomas is not like Hickey. Perhaps he can make Tozer forget. He moves against Tozer, tries to let it be known, without seeming to expect, that he is willing. Whatever Tozer is missing, he can have it. Thomas is resolved. The earlier touch has faded, and he feels himself flush anew, trembling as he moves his hand between their bodies, finally puts his hand on what he has looked at and felt. He feels stupid for having hesitated. It’s just as he thought. It’s very much like touching himself. Having gone this far, he lets himself enter fully into reverie, thoughts he’d barely allowed himself before. He imagines how it would feel to have Tozer’s cock in his mouth. Though he has nothing to compare it to, and every indication that it might be unpleasant, he finds that, touching Tozer, feeling how Tozer responds to being touched, he wants to try. He could ask, how to best do it. Surely, he’s given himself away sufficiently that there’s no harm in admitting to what he doesn’t know. He could.   
“Tommy...”  
His hand is wet, but only a little bit. How would it taste? It’s only a matter of deciding how to ask.   
Before he does, he will think one more thing. He’s already on his back, and Tozer is already on top of him, moving with greater abandon, close to the end. Tozer might find himself unable to resist, turn Thomas over, take him from behind. The idea is alarming, but even for the fear it brings, Thomas feels himself blush, his breath hitch, his mouth open. He goes further. It might happen too quickly for him to object, or even to understand what’s happening. It would hurt. That’s the one thing he does know, because everyone knows it. Yet, there must be more to it, or no one would ever do so willingly.  
He knows about Hickey and Gibson. Because everyone knows.  
He closes his mouth.  
Tozer would hold him, but he wouldn’t hold him down. He wouldn’t make it hurt more than it had to. His hands would be on Thomas’ hips, between his legs.  
He opens his mouth.  
“Let-” But he can go no further before Tozer sweeps up his hand by the wrist, moves it aside, re-positions himself, pressed up against Thomas’ hip. Then, he can only hold on as Tozer finishes himself like this, head down, his breath blazing against Thomas’ neck, an answering pool of heat spreading down Thomas’ thigh with the last shudder of Tozer’s hips. Breathing heavily, his face still pressed to Thomas’ neck, Tozer twines his arms around Thomas, and Thomas embraces him. For what feels like a long time, he holds Tozer like this, one hand moving gently up and down Tozer’s back, feeling his body rise and fall with his breath; one of Tozer’s wrists against his mouth, Tozer’s pulse against his lips.  
Finally, Tozer shifts partly off of him, and he’s able to look Tozer in the face.   
“Thank you,” Tozer says.  
What a strange thing for him to say. How strange that he should thank Thomas. How strange.  
“I wanted,” Thomas begins. He looks into Tozer’s eyes until he feels he must look away. He doesn’t look away. “I wanted to try-”  
“That can wait until the next time,” Tozer says.  
Thomas kisses him.  
The sound.  
Of footsteps on the shales.  
Just outside of the tent.


End file.
